Weapon prices dropping drastically since weapons are now no longer indestructible items, assured to serve you for a life time but instead can break ... that makes perfect sense to me.
I agree that what you mentioned is a Big factor.
The Quality element Did hurt the Market.
But it's not the Main Factor. As i mentioned Before, If we were all rolling in Dough, it wouldn't matter how weak Strong Weapons were, I mean seriously, we hardly ever hear about worthless /8 or /10 Weapons.
What we do hear about is the inability to pay for those weapons, and the need to buy them at half of what they used to be.
Not only that, but sellers who need cash quick, and are forced to sell at lower prices.
Quality hurt us.
But the Main hit was the flow of money, which was the Platinum mine.
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A SWSS is a "Silverweave Short Sword". They are slash 10 short swords which are one of the strongest swords available in the game. I have heard that some people have 10.8 slash broad swords.
Malfini there is no BS with 10.8 slash..... Slash 10 is the max, no such Broadsword Exists.

The SWSS is the Strongest Sword(NOT one of the strongest), SWLS (Longsword) is only a /2.6.

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I've only looted maybe half a dozen to a dozen silverweave weapons in all the time I've been playing, and there were people who were getting "many" in a single day?
And zanzibar, I never mentioned looting Silverweave weapons more than once in a day.
Although that was possible.
I mentioned looting lots of strong weapons, Such as /6's /8's, and /10's
Before people could loot atleast two /8's a day, and Iron swords were everywhere, with /6 iron Daggers.
But nowadays you'll be lucky if you can work all day long and get even 1 weapon with /6 or higher.
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Here's a tip: Don't use SWs to kill rats -_-" Fight everything you can, with melee. That doesn't require repairs.
A full set of armour should be worthed something like 3 LSs looted from a glad. If you play your cards right, you can kill thousands of glads with one armour set. So... armour decay shouldn't be an issue.
There are way better ways to make money than there were before the big wipe, And you can make more too, compared to that time.
And, hee comes the great final tip: Grouping on thougher monsters is good. It is fun, less boring than camping alone and reduces considerably the strain on your weapons or armour.
And Syilph, Your Suggestions were meaningless, No one uses SWSS's to fight rats

..... telling us not to is pointless.

As for armor: Tell me that spending 10k every two weeks, or even every week, is "not an issue".
That's 20-40k a month. Even if i could acrue that kind of money killing Glad's, Why not use that money as profit, and invest it elsewhere?
It's not like we kill Glads to Pay for our armor.
So yes, Armor decay is an issue, and the costs add up, week to week and month to month.
It's been sucking money out of the economy by the thousands, not like the weapon repair kits, but still a significant amount.
Oh and about Grouping, yea, you can try that, but you might not be so happy when after 6-8 hours of killing, your friend gets the /8 Dagger you wanted.
I'll stick by myself when hunting for weapons, less drama and problems that way.

Grouping is better when you and everyone else is just having fun.
Usually i group during things like the Guild Ulber Hunts because of the amount of hits it takes to take one down, fighting as a team.
~~Datruth